1. So performance testing is one of the most important phases of any product launch as it verifies and validates the overall product performance.
2. Performance Testing can be done in different forms depending upon the resource availability and the type and volume of the user base.
3. The main agenda behind conducting performance testing on any product is to make sure that the product’s performance is as expected before it gets launched into the market so performance testing is the process of testing a software application under a specific workload.
4. Performance testing is a software testing process used to test the speed response time stability, reliability, scalability, and resource usage of a software application under a particular workload the main purpose of performance testing is to identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks in the software application.
5. Performance testing mainly focuses on three factors of a software program

• Speed -> Here it identifies whether the response of the application is fast or not.
• Scalability -> Where the maximum user load is determined.
• Stability -> Where the stability of the application is checked under various workloads.

Why Performance Testing?

• The only concern of a software system is not features and functionality; the response time, reliability, resource, and scalability are also important factors so the goal of performance testing is not to find bugs but to eliminate performance glitches.
• performance testing is performed to help the stakeholders with information about the application concerning the application speed, stability, and scalability furthermore performance testing reveals what needs to be improved before the product goes into the market if there is no performance testing the software might suffer from issues such as running slow while several users use it at the same time across different operating systems and poor usability.
• Performance testing determines if the software or application meets speed, scalability, and stability requirements under expected workloads applications sent to the market with poor performance metrics due to non-consistent or poor performance testing are likely to bring a bad reputation and fail to meet the expected sales goals.

What are the types of Performance Testing?

So there are six types of performance testing. Let’s have a look at all the six types of testing.

1. Load testing – Load testing is non-functional software testing, in which the tester tests the performance of the software application under a specific expected load.

It determines how the software application behaves while the application is accessed by multiple users at the same time.

The main goal is to improve the performance of the application and ensure the stability and smooth functioning of the application before it goes live.

2. Stress testing – Stress testing is a type in which different ways to break the system are found, that is how much load a system can sustain. Stress testing has an incremental approach where the load is increased gradually the test starts with the load for which the application has already been tested.

The stress testing verifies the stability & reliability of the software application, the goal is to measure the software application on its robustness and error handling capabilities under extremely heavy load ( Test the application beyond the limit ) conditions and ensure that the software/application does not crash.

3. Spike testing – Spike testing is a part of performance testing. In this testing, the tester observes the behavior of the software application by subjecting it to a sudden increase or decrease in the load.

The objective of spike testing is to identify performance when the load suddenly increases or decreases.

4. Endurance testing – Endurance testing is a type of performance testing, where the tester tests the application performance under certain load conditions over a long period, performance testing is one of the significant types of non-functional testing.

Generally, Endurance testing is also known as “Soak testing” and “Longevity testing”. This testing is done at the last phase of the performance run cycle.

5. Scalability testing – Scalability testing is a type where the application is determined if it would be able to scale up whenever needed. The need for scaling up comes when there is an increase in user load on the application.
6. Volume testing – Volume testing is the type where the performance of the system is checked concerning the volume of the data

To check a volume test a huge volume of data is entered into the database. This test can be incremental or steady in the incremental test.

The volume of the data is increased gradually generally with the application using the database size grows and it is necessary to test the application against a heavy database.

Tools for Performance Testing

1. Apache Jmeter
2. WebLoad
3. LoadUI
4. NeoLoad
5. LoadNinja
6. LoadView
7. LoadRunner
8. Silk Performer
9. AppLoader
10. io